In considering two extended examples of educational reform efforts, this discussion traces relations that become visible through analytic approaches associated with actor‐network theory . The strategy here is to present multiple readings of the two examples. The first reading adopts an ANT approach to follow ways that all actors—human and non‐human entities, including the entity that is taken to be ‘educational reform’—are performed into being through the play of linkages among heterogeneous elements. Then, further readings focus not only on the (...) material practices that become enacted and distributed, but also on the otherings that occur: the various fluid spaces and ambivalent belongings that create actor‐network but also escape them. For educational research, particularly in educational reform and policy, it is argued that ANT analyses are particularly useful to examine the complex enactments in these dynamics. That is, ANT can illuminate movements of ordering and disordering that occur through minute socio‐material connections in educational interventions. ANT readings also can discern, within these attempts to order people and practices, the spaces of flux and instability that enable and protect alternate possibilities. (shrink)

Sociomaterial theories, including actor–network theory (ANT), materialist feminism and posthumanism, are sometimes argued to not be addressing or unable to address sufficiently the political and are therefore dismissed as irrelevant to educational research. Through an extended discussion of writers across the social sciences, this article seeks to counter such a view. Drawing specifically on the work of Latour on the nature of critique and on examples of political analysis from writers such as Barad, Bennett, Braidotti, Marres and Whatmore, we suggest (...) that sociomaterialist approaches to the more-than-human open up extended understandings and productive alternative practices of politics. While recognising that this is a work in progress and not without difficulties and challenges, we argue that there is much to be gained for educational researchers from engaging with such approaches. (shrink)

Educational analysts need new ways to engage with policy processes in a networked world of complex transnational connections. In this discussion, Tara Fenwick and Richard Edwards argue for a greater focus on materiality in educational policy as a way to trace the heterogeneous interactions and precarious linkages that enact policy as complex manifestations. In particular, Fenwick and Edwards point to the methodologies of actor-network theory (ANT), at least in its most recent permutations, as a (...) useful approach to materiality in policy analysis. Published examples of educational policy studies drawing from these methodologies are beginning to appear. In reviewing these, we argue that ANT sensibilities help to make visible the sociomaterial assemblages—the “messy objects”—that enact policy, the micro-negotiations that mobilize and stabilize (and destabilize) these assemblages, and the multiple ontologies that often coexist in policy environments. Fenwick and Edwards conclude with a discussion of methodological issues for working with concepts of ontological variance and messy objects in educational policy. (shrink)

_Researching Education Through Actor-Network Theory_ offers a new take on educational research, demonstrating the ways in which actor-network theory can expand the understanding of educational change. An international collaboration exploring diverse manifestations of educational change Illustrates the impact of actor-network theory on educational research Positions education as a key area where actor-network theory can add value, as it has been shown to do in other social sciences A valuable resource for anyone interested in the sociology and philosophy of education.

Drawing upon concepts from actor‐network theory (ANT), this article explores how the principle of symmetry can provide alternative readings of the translations of the prescribed into the enacted curriculum, without reducing understanding to explanation. The paper explores the contrasting ways in which the prescribed curriculum is translated into the enacted curriculum as certain organisations, individuals and artefacts become enrolled through networks of school and college. It points to the ways in which a position which eschews conventional distinctions e.g. between the (...) human and non‐human, and enacts an anti‐foundationalist ontology provides the basis for a radical materialist understanding of the multiplicity of educational practices. (shrink)

In considering two extended examples of educational reform efforts, this discussion traces relations that become visible through analytic approaches associated with actor-network theory (ANT). The strategy here is to present multiple readings of the two examples. The first reading adopts an ANT approach to follow ways that all actors—human and non-human entities, including the entity that is taken to be ‘educational reform’—are performed into being through the play of linkages among heterogeneous elements. Then, further readings focus not only on the (...) material practices that become enacted and distributed, but also on the otherings that occur: the various fluid spaces and ambivalent belongings that create actor-network(s) but also escape them. For educational research, particularly in educational reform and policy, it is argued that ANT analyses are particularly useful to examine the complex enactments in these dynamics. That is, ANT can illuminate movements of ordering and disordering that occur through minute socio-material connections in educational interventions. ANT readings also can discern, within these attempts to order people and practices, the spaces of flux and instability that enable and protect alternate possibilities. (shrink)

While complexity science is gaining interest among educational theorists, its constructs do not speak to educational responsibility or related core issues in education of power and ethics. Yet certain themes of complexity, as taken up in educational theory, can help unsettle the more controlling and problematic discourses of educational responsibility such as the potential to limit learning and subjectivity or to prescribe social justice. The purpose of this article is to critically examine complexity science against notions of responsibility in terms (...) of implications for education. First, themes of complexity science prominent in contemporary educational writing are explained. Then dilemmas of responsibility in complexity are explored, such as what forms and meanings responsibility can have in a ‘complexified’ perspective of education, how care for others is mobilised, and how desire can be understood. Analyses of ethical action grounded in complexity science are then examined, as well as theories of the ethical subject and participatory responsibility that are congruent with certain tenets of a complexity ontology. Finally, the possibility of an educational vision of responsibility animated by complexity theories is considered, drawing from related writings of Bai, Biesta, Derrida, Levinas and Varela. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction ANT, After‐ANT, and Educational Reform Network Readings and Educational Reform A First Reading of Reform: Extending the Network Re‐thinking the Reading: Centrality and Otherness A Second Reading: Mobilizing and Sustaining Reform Re‐reading Reform: Fluid Spaces and Ambivalent Belongings Conclusion Notes References.

Responsibility and professionalism are increasingly issues of concern for professional associations, employers and educators alike. When bad things happen, professionals are often held personally accountable for complex situations. Professional Responsibility and Professionalism advances our approaches to professional responsibility from individual-centred, virtue-based prescriptions towards understanding and responding effectively to the multifaceted challenges encountered today by professionals working in dynamic complexity. The author applies a sociomaterial examination to specific examples drawn from different professional contexts of practice. She examines important implications for what (...) professional responsibility and accountability might mean individually and collectively, and what it might be becoming when demands increasingly conflict, and when we accept that capacities for action are performed into existence in emergent and precarious webs of both human and non-human forces. The chapters explore some of the most prominent questions in professional responsibility, including: What does professional responsibility, and accountability, mean in the escalating complexities and conflicts confronting today's professionals? How does professional responsibility become developed and enacted, and through what social and material entanglements? How should responsibility be determined in multi-agency and interprofessional practice? What happens when professional decisions are delegated to software algorithms and diagnostic instruments? How are new governing regimes of professional work, such as innovation imperatives, excessive audit and logics of blame and scapegoating, reconfiguring responsibility? How can professionals respond simultaneously to individuals in need, the obligations of their profession, the demands of their employer and an anxious society? A major concern addressed by each chapter, and the book as a whole, is educating professionals in and for responsibility. Specific dilemmas and strategies are offered for educators in universities, workplaces and professional development contexts who seek new approaches to helping professionals learn to critically understand and practise responsibility today. This book will appeal to a wide audience of education researchers and post-graduate students studying professional practice, professionalism and education across a wide range of disciplines. Health professionals, professionals working in private practices, such as law, architecture and engineering, newer professions such as social work and policing, and educational professionals at all levels will find stories and strategies reflecting key issues of their practice in this detailed exploration of professional responsibility and accountability. (shrink)

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) zählt zu den herausragendsten Komponisten der Welt überhaupt und gilt aufgrund seiner musikalischen Interpretationen als ein Erneuerer der europäischen Musiklandschaft. Er fühlte eine enge Verbindung zu Ludwig van Beethoven, da eben sein Werk für die Entscheidung verantwortlich war, sich der Musik zuzuwenden. Das vorliegende Werk ist eine Hommage an den deutschen Künstler und erschien zu seinem einhundersten Geburtsjahr 1870. Es handelt sich hierbei um die englische Übersetzung der deutschen Originalfassung.

A number of theoretical positions in psychology—including variants of case‐based reasoning, instance‐based analogy, and connectionist models—maintain that abstract rules are not involved in human reasoning, or at best play a minor role. Other views hold that the use of abstract rules is a core aspect of human reasoning. We propose eight criteria for determining whether or not people use abstract rules in reasoning, and examine evidence relevant to each criterion for several rule systems. We argue that there is substantial evidence (...) that several different inferential rules, including modus ponens, contractual rules, causal rules, and the law of large numbers, are used in solving everyday problems. We discuss the implications for various theoretical positions and consider hybrid mechanisms that combine aspects of instance and rule models. (shrink)

A key component of research on human sentence processing is to characterize the processing difficulty associated with the comprehension of words in context. Models that explain and predict this difficulty can be broadly divided into two kinds, expectation‐based and memory‐based. In this work, we present a new model of incremental sentence processing difficulty that unifies and extends key features of both kinds of models. Our model, lossy‐context surprisal, holds that the processing difficulty at a word in context is proportional to (...) the surprisal of the word given a lossy memory representation of the context—that is, a memory representation that does not contain complete information about previous words. We show that this model provides an intuitive explanation for an outstanding puzzle involving interactions of memory and expectations: language‐dependent structural forgetting, where the effects of memory on sentence processing appear to be moderated by language statistics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that dependency locality effects, a signature prediction of memory‐based theories, can be derived from lossy‐context surprisal as a special case of a novel, more general principle called information locality. (shrink)

As organizational leaders worry about the appalling low percentage of people who feel engaged in their work, academics are trying to understand what causes an increase in engagement. We collected survey data from 231 team members from two organizations. We examined the impact of team members’ emotional intelligence (EI) and their perception of shared personal vision, shared positive mood, and perceived organizational support (POS) on the members’ degree of organizational engagement. We found shared vision, shared mood, and POS have a (...) direct, positive association with engagement. In addition, shared vision and POS interact with EI to positively influence engagement. Besides highlighting the importance of shared personal vision, positive mood, and POS, our study contributes to the emergent understanding of EI by revealing EI’s amplifying effect on shared vision and POS in relation to engagement. We conclude by discussing the research and practical implications of this study. (shrink)

According to Myles Brand, ‘[t]he key to advocating a particularist account of events -or any account of events - is to provide adequate identity conditions’. He thinks that the function of an identity condition is ‘to specify the nature of’ events.To state an identity condition for events is to provide a way to complete the formula: The mere fact that a proposed completion of is true does not imply that it is an informative identity condition for events or that it (...) plays any role in specifying the nature of events. (shrink)

This article provides a brief background of key issues in physician burnout, a significant problem in the healthcare industry. The extent and severity of burnout are not well understood, and those seeking help are often stigmatized. A number of different approaches to alleviating burnout have been suggested, but the problem lacks any single or simple solution.We posit that an ethics committee may be well positioned to help address this issue because of its unique position within an institution. An ethics committee (...) serves the entire hospital staff regardless of department. As such it may be able to identify common elements in the development of burnout, and can serve as a conduit to administration in identifying these. An ethics committee can obtain information about the extent of burnout by conducting surveys to assess the extent and severity of burnout in an institution, and serve as a central resource to help address and alleviate it.Finally, an ethics committee may be able to act as an intermediary between practitioners and the administration, in advising the administration of the extent of the problem and offer suggestions for alleviating it. (shrink)

In this series of lectures on the painters Hsia Kuei (twelfth-thirteenth centuries), Shen Chou (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries), and Shih-t'ao (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries), Richard Edwards explores the special relationship between the self and landscape in Chinese art. These three painters, each important in his own time and deemed a master by later critics, were all concerned with the subjective in the objective world. In Chinese painting there is no clear desire to separate these two realms; rather, there is a constant, conscious (...) play between the physical reality of the world and the subjective vision of the artist. The artist is continually imitating the world--sometimes more, sometimes less--but he never denies its appearance to the point of total abstraction; nor, in the other extreme, does he claim for the physical world an existence independent of his own involvement. Richard Edwards is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Art and Art History, University of Michigan. (shrink)

Now that learning is seen as lifelong and lifewide, what specifically makes a learning context? What are the resultant consequences for teaching practices when working in specific contexts? Drawing upon a variety of academic disciplines, Rethinking Contexts for Learning and Teaching explores some of the different means of understanding teaching and learning, both in and across contexts, the issues they raise and their implications for pedagogy and research. It specifically addresses What constitutes a context for learning? How do we engage (...) the full resources of learners for learning? What are the relationships between different learning contexts? What forms of teaching can most effectively mobilise learning across contexts? How do we methodologically and theoretically conceptualise contexts for learning? Drawing upon practical examples and the UK’s TLRP, this book brings together a number of leading researchers to examine the assumptions about context embedded within specific teaching and learning practices. It considers how they might be developed to extend opportunity by drawing upon learning from a range of contexts, including schools, colleges, universities and workplaces. (shrink)

This book looks at how the notion of the learning society has developed over the years, and how, and why, flexibility has become a more central concept in much policy and academic debate.